Better Than Pumpkin Pie Cake

Welcome! If you're new to The Finer Things in Life, you might like to subscribe for free updates. Subscribe via RSS to read updates in your favorite feed reader, or via email to have new posts delivered directly to your inbox. Thanks for visiting!

Seems I’m not the only one with pumpkin on the brain at this time of year. As I’ve added over 500 pumpkin recipes to my All Things Pumpkin Pinterest board, various delectable versions of this dessert keep popping up. You may have seen it before, but let me entice you one last time before Thanksgiving with this variation of Better Than Pumpkin Pie Cake shared with me by my sister-in-law years ago.

Just yesterday we made this family favorite again, using the “guts” of one of the kids’ pumpkin patch pumpkins. Another child had a friend over, and he oooo’d and ahhh’d over his sample. “Wait. You mean you baked a real pumpkin and made this out of it? That’s amazing!” Ha! It’s fun to be amazing every once in a while.

You, too, can be amazing, even with canned pumpkin and a boxed yellow cake mix. I promise I won’t tell!

This is exactly the same recipe (except ours calls for pumkin pie spice, and a few variations of measurements) that I made Saturday, a family favorite. We call ours Pumpkin Pie Crunch! We serve it with cool whip on top.

I’m wondering if substituting almond milk or coconut milk would work just as well as the evaporated milk which I believe is a high saturated fat ingredient. The almond or coconut milk has a lot more potent nutrients than evaporated milk. Just curious.

Amy…What is the consistency of this dessert?? I made it last night for my husband to take to work today. After I let it cool, I needed to sample it…didn’t want to send an untested recipe to work without trying it…besides it smelled soooo good, I just had to try it. When I sampled it, the consistency of the pumpkin/cake part was very runny. I thought it would be more cake like, so I reheated the oven & cooked it for another 30 minutes. By this time it was after midnight & I needed to go to bed. This morning when I checked it, it seemed better, but I was still leary of sending it with my husband, but I did. Hopefully it turned out okay…eek! What are your thoughts on this?? Thanks…Erin

@Erin Blair, Hmmmm, that doesn’t sound right. It is soft, but not runny at all. I could probably cut it into squares to serve if I wanted to, but we just use a big serving spoon. That’s odd that you had to cook it so long!

Okay, so I must have been living under a rock because I’ve never heard of this dessert. Decided to try it, with sweet potatoes because they came in our produce box and I needed to use them. Amy, I have to say you and your SIL know your stuff. This is so off the hook! I enjoyed this dessert more than I do pie. BTW used a homemade gluten free yellow cake mix (from The Gluten Free Cooking School website). Man let me tell you, so, so good! Did I tell you how good it is? LOL Thanks again Amy.

Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for this recipe. I’ve found other similar ones but decided to start with your version. So glad we did as it was absolutely delicous, what we got to taste of it. My daughter took it to work, and except for about 3T, it was completely gone by the end of the night. Even she didn’t get a piece, but was gratified when several people — even confirmed pumpkin haters — came to thank and compliment her on it!. Having no Pampered Chef spices, we used your suggestion of 2t cinnamon-2t pumpkin pie spice, and it was a perfect combo! We also chose yellow cake mix, though considered spice and buttered pecan, but I realized after tasting it that you can’t really taste the cake anyway with the strong pumpkin flavoring. We made one slight change suggested by another site: we put the nuts over the cake mix, THEN poured on the butter (1 cup, btw). It gave the nuts a wonderful, praline-like texture. Just delicious! We will be making this for our holiday dinner this year. Thanks so much again!

BTW, forgot to mention, for those concerned with texture, that she baked it around 4pm, but co-workers didn’t get a chance to eat it until after midnight (night shift), so it had several hours to set up and the texture was perfect: fluffy-crunchy on top, creamy on the bottom. YUM!

Hi Amy this looks like a great recipe, and I can’t wait to make it. I was wondering about the 1 cup of sugar. Can it be left out entirely? The cake mix has sugar in it, or at least can I get away with 1/2 a cup?